Argentina is undoubtedly a country with a lot of potential in the cannabis industry. We are talking about an agro-industrial country with great natural resources, installed capacity, and high-quality human talent. However, before talking about cannabis in Argentina, it is important to understand the Latin American context around this emerging industry that promises to become one of the greatest productive opportunities of the 21st century.
While the planet experiences a 5% decrease in world GDP due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the cannabis industry has been growing at a year-on-year rate of 25% in the United States and begin to generate interest in LATAM in response to the economic crisis of the region.
Argentina has a great opportunity to become a global benchmark within the cannabis industry due to the conditions that we had previously mentioned, but also because production costs are up to 80% lower than in North America and Europe.
In November 2020, the regulatory framework of the law that provides for the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes in Argentina appeared. Although the appearance of it is undoubtedly an important step in the Argentine legislation regarding cannabis, the productive conditions are still limited in comparison to other regulations in the region, such as Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, among others.
The most interesting points of the new Argentine regulation are the legalization of self-cultivation for individuals and associations and the possibility of marketing oils and creams in authorized pharmacies. The greatest weakness of Argentine legislation is that it maintains cannabis production within a governmental framework, excluding the private sector.
According to national referents on the subject, the next step for Argentina is the creation of a productive law for non-psychoactive cannabis, or hemp, which would open the game to producers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs from the private sector.